Who You Calling A Jesse?

In my relative short career I have not had the pleasure of surviving a unionised environment except as a summer student doing landscaping work for the City of Sault Ste Marie. IT related work environments just don’t seem all that interested in a union, I would argue most knowledge workers have little interest in such a club. However here we are in 2008 at the University of Waterloo facing a vote in an attempt to certify OSSTF as a bargaining unit on campus. The vote is today however the outcome won’t be decide for approximately a month due to some dissagreement in who is in the bargaining unit.

The one thing that does get me about this entire process is how the law in this province favours unions over the individual. Maybe in industrial work environments the method used to unionize makes sense as workers generally may be easily replaced and can be easily bullied. However in a professional work environment, where it can take a few months to a few years before a worker performs at top form with higher education credentials, it feels like the whole process tramples on your rights no matter which side of the fence you sit. The behaviour out of the union itself just feels like they are after members, they don’t actually care about the workers otherwise they wouldn’t pursue unionization where the support is 50-50 at best (here it is 60% against, but they need to vote).

This whole experience has taught me a lot and I’d like to think I managed to get through it, up to this point, as President of the Staff Association (the opposing force) with only being called a few names: Meat puppet, lap dog, etc. Oh and apparently I have been paying people to vote… that would mean I had personal wealth large enough to do that. Cool, someone tell my bank manager ;)

My ‘other job’ at the moment is President of the University of Waterloo Staff Association which represents 1800 or so staff and today I initiated the public part of a process with our members that I believe will make the organization relevant, effective, and very unique. The UWSA is not a union nor does it conduct itself much like a union. People choose to be members of the organization and pay a relatively low flat fee, we don’t do collective bargaining, and we don’t resort to arbitration.

Instead we work with the University Administration to ensure staff have a voice on policies that directly effect them as keep on top of issues like working conditions, pensions and benefits. We also assist staff in navigating those policies, understanding their pensions and benefits, and answer any questions they may have about their employer. Just recently the UWSA finished re-writing the dispute resolution policy making it more ‘usable’ and effective for both staff and administration. Major changes were presented today.

This work along with the expectations of the staff for a level of service have made it nearly impossible to function effectively with the limited resources we have (we collect $5 a month from members currently). I introduced today a strategy that would have a new constitution for the organization approved by members no later than early Feb 2008, a new full-time position of Executive Manager created, and a small increase in resources through a staggered increase in fees in the near future with a an eye on a very large reserve of resources in the future. If you would like some detail, the slides are available in a PDF.

The idea isn’t to be a union but to be a more service oriented organization that has the ability to make some serious moves to assist members if it needs to. With more resources comes the ability to offer services such as (no way near exhaustive list here): interest free loans for education and training outside of UW, daycare subsidies, larger and more student awards for members children, awards for members children not attending UW, heavier discounted tickets for things, build a community presence, etc. This list needs to be expanded and other ideas need to be considered as yet.

With the lack of UWSA blog and/or forum I invite staff to comment here. Yes the comments are moderated (keeps SPAM away) but I will strive to post all comments on the topic. Ideas and feedback are welcome.